Professional Mourners: Why People Were Paid to Weep

Professional mourners were people paid to lament at a funeral. In many societies the work was done mostly by women, though not always. This article follows the custom from ancient Egypt to China and Britain today.

Who were professional mourners?

They were hired to weep, wail, and sing for someone who was not their own relative. The role has had many names. Roman writers called them praeficae, Irish funerals had keening women, Victorian undertakers supplied “mutes,” and Chinese funerals have mourners known for kusang, which NPR translates as crying and shouting. What they did differed, but the idea was the same: grief given a public voice.

Where did the custom begin?

Egyptian tomb art shows groups of mourners in funeral processions, mostly women and sometimes men, who cry, shake their hair, and pull at it, according to Egyptologist Maria Rosa Valdesogo. Two women stood beside the mummy in the roles of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, whom she describes as professional mourners.

The Bible also mentions hired mourners. In Jeremiah 9:17, people are told to send for skilled wailing women, according to Nave’s Topical Bible.

What did hired mourners do in Greece and Rome?

In ancient Greece, women’s lament was part of every stage of a funeral: the laying out of the body, the procession, and the grave. Classicist Helene Foley notes that this often involved hired mourners known for their skill at stirring grief.

In Rome, a funeral procession was headed by musicians, then by hired women called praeficae, who sang the funeral song in praise of the dead, according to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. The Getty Museum adds that they were often at the head of the procession and that many lived near the temple of Libitina, the funeral goddess. Their status was low, and they were criticized for helping rich families show off.

Why did families hire them?

There were several reasons. One was display. A large, loud funeral showed a family’s wealth, which is why the Getty says the practice drew criticism.

Another was skill and meaning. Keening in Ireland was a formal lament over the body at the wake, performed by professional keeners, and in one scholar’s view it helped guide the soul to the other world. That is her interpretation.

A third was duty. In parts of China, a family that does not cry enough may be thought to lack filial piety, according to an AFP report. At a funeral described by NPR, the niece of the dead man said a proper mourner was needed because young people no longer know how to cry.

Why did laws and churches try to stop them?

Greek and Roman lawmakers tried to limit mourning. Laws attributed to Solon, in the early sixth century BCE, banned scratching the cheeks and set dirges, and allowed only close female relatives and women over sixty to join the procession, according to Plutarch and a classical review. One scholar argues these laws show that women’s mourning was seen as a threat to civic order. In Rome, the Twelve Tables forbade women to tear their cheeks, according to Smith’s Dictionary.

In Ireland, keening faded after the Catholic Church disapproved, and it had largely died out by the middle of the 20th century, according to reporting on a BBC documentary. An academic interviewed for it said the keeners’ role as women was seen as transgressive. In China, funeral rituals dating back about 2,000 years were banned in the Cultural Revolution as superstition, according to NPR, and later returned.

What were Irish keeners and Victorian mutes?

Irish keeners were often paid little: a glass of whiskey, snuff, or a meal, according to the Irish Examiner.

Victorian mutes were different. They were hired attendants who took part in the procession in mourning dress. A funeral director’s history says they wore black sashes and carried staffs draped in crepe, white for a child’s funeral, and had disappeared by the early 1900s. In Dickens’s Oliver Twist, the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry employs Oliver as a child mute, and the Bodleian Libraries call him perhaps literature’s best-known mute. A Victorian account says funerals of the poor were always attended by hired mourners.

Do professional mourners still exist?

Yes. In 2013, NPR profiled Hu Xinglian, a mourner in Chongqing, China, known for kusang, which it translates as crying and shouting. In Britain, a firm called Rent-a-Mourner reported in 2013 that it charged £45 an hour and briefed its staff on the life of the deceased. Its founder said their main purpose was not to cry but to increase the number of people at a funeral.

What does the history tell us?

Public mourning has long been a social act, not only a private feeling. The BBC presenter Marie-Louise Muir wondered whether keeners were grieving with a family or performing, according to the Irish Examiner. An academic answered that priests were also paid for funerals. For related customs, see Funerals in Ancient Greece and Rome, The Irish Wake, Victorian Mourning Customs, and How the Undertaker Became the Funeral Director.